


The Unastonishing Tale of How It Ends (And Begins)

by waferkya



Category: Basketball RPF
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Introspection, M/M, Slash, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May 2012: the Los Angeles Lakers file away another humiliation at the Conference semifinals; Pau Gasol's career in the NBA looks irreparably compromised, but hey, it happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unastonishing Tale of How It Ends (And Begins)

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [The Unastonishing Tale of How It Ends (And Begins)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/394088) by [waferkya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya). 



> I originally wrote this fic in, let’s see, January 2012; as it’s set in May 2012, you can imagine it was speculation back then, but now the background events are bullshit. Let’s call it a What If, then, and go on our merry ride.
> 
> But the thing is, a year later and I can still relate to many of the things I wrote, especially about Pau, and his relationship with the Lakers (and Juan Carlos obviously but that’s, like, the only constant in the universe) (Desmond Hume got it aaaaaall wrong). Which is pretty sad, if you consider the shitty situation I’m talking about (albeit a little naively) in this fic… well. LET US ALL MENTALLY HUG PAU FOR A BIT OKAY? OKAY.

It’s not like he didn’t know this would happen.

Some people threw him away like a broken toy in November already, before the regular season even started, and they didn’t spare him a glance, not even when he got points raining, and blocks, and even assists. Some other people never really made up their mind about him, _do we like him or not_ , and they’d let their opinion swing back and forth in rhythm with Kobe’s moods: so, a forty-points game by the Black Mamba and, yeah, Gasol’s our king; seventeen dimes and kick him back to Spain; twenty-three and, all right, okay, he can stick around until next time.

It’s not like the entire team didn’t know this would happen, either; money’s fine, money’s great, miracles are wonderful and stubbornness can keep you afloat, but when the end of the season gets closer and closer you’ll feel all the games you lost — and the ones you lost like a bunch of idiots, those ones you’ll feel the most — weigh you down like stones.

When the Lakers can’t keep up with the current anymore and they find themselves stranded on the shore of a Conference semi, it’s just the dumbest fans — no, the word’s _optimistic_ , — who end up surprised, like the world just ended and no Mayan prediction got it right.

Pau looks around and it feels like being in a movie, a little; the pain in his shoulder doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to him anymore: it’s a dull pounding that he’s grown used to, because it’s been six months since the last time he’s had a healthy deltoid.

It feels like being in a movie because the arena is a blurry picture of black and grey, and his ears are ringing with the white noise of a barely audible laugh track, which is the far away celebrations of the fans — San Antonio is going to the finals. San Antonio. _San Antonio_.

It’s not like he didn’t know this would happen; it’s not like he’s truly surprised. He doesn’t have a reason to get scared, so Pau just keeps breathing quietly, waiting for the credits to roll.

He’s nervous. He needs to calm down and he really, really wants to play, re-write the fucking game, the whole season and, since we’re here, maybe even last year’s play-offs. He’s nervous. He can’t even duck his head and hide under a towel like Artest did, because he’s Pau Gasol, he’s Pau Ga _soft_ : even if nobody was looking at him, even if the cameras were buzzing around the winners rather than the defeated, even if the arena was empty he couldn’t let go, because he doesn’t think he could pull himself back again.

The truth is this time was better than last year; they lost four-to-three, and it sucks, but it’s still better than a sweep. Pau was so angry in the last two games that, to Hell with the coach and his tactics and his plans that didn’t work not even one fucking time; Pau snapped and went to take the position he wanted, expecting Kobe to call the plays he knew would actually get them some points.

Pau went back to the paint, where his name is, where courts sink and rise to make up the shape of his feet.

It was better, and it was shitty anyway.

Pau doesn’t want to look back at the bench, and he doesn’t quite look at Parker or Neal or even Manu Ginobili when they stop by and say hi, goodbye, see you maybe this summer in London; he keeps breathing quietly, waiting for the curtain to fall, because it’s obvious, this is over.

He learned, over the years, that crying for a victory is okay even in the NBA; as long as it’s a happy tear or a face you pull because you’re so proud that you _won_ , America is fine with that. You won, and that gives you the right to do whatever the fuck you want. But there’s nothing worse than a Eurosoftie who can’t even keep his back straight when the world is collapsing on his head, so Pau keeps a lid on everything and he’s so good at it he looks like a wax figure of himself.

You’d never say his chest is turning to charcoal with the burning desire to run to the basket and score a dunk so hard he’d bend the ring; you’d never say he wants to curl up and sob his way through grief; you’d never say he’d sell his soul, right now, if it was enough to take him six months back in time. You’d never even say he’s actually there, honestly; you’d never say he knows what’s going and what’s going to happen, tomorrow morning and the morning after that.

If you looked at him right now you’d think he was someone else. All calm and collected and dignified like a statue, standing in front of the bench to hide Bynum’s hysterical fit, with his hair a mess and his eyes a little unfocused, his mouth slightly open, Pau looks a little too much like Navarro, and that’s just another comparison he doesn’t want, in a season he’d dreamed would be so, so different.

It was his shoulder, in the beginning. It hurt so, so much, but Pau fought through it for a reason so simple that nobody understood, not the coach or his teammates, not the newspapers and not the blogs: he needed it.

He needed the adrenaline rush, the stress, the ubercondensed training sessions when some days they barely had enough time to get to the arena on time for the game; he needed scoring and doing things, doing them right. He needed to deserve Kobe’s smug smirks, he needed to get thumbs up from the bench, he needed to find once again the Lakers, his Lakers, and himself, the kind of player he knows he can be. He needed to go back to the scary Pau, the Pau who runs a lot and wins a lot and can afford to shrug off critics with a polite laugh.

Instead it was Hell, six months long and as wide as the continent, a nightmare of too many planes they caught too early in the morning, and too many missed shots for too many games and too many flaws in the group; Pau ended up going back to the martyr who walks on a broken foot to shoot a couple of free throws, only there was no World Cup waiting for him at the end of all this.

He wanted to find himself again, this year; he kept together his shoulder with a padded sleeve, but he has no idea where to start looking for the pieces of his shattered pride.

He’s thirty-one and he should probably have topped being a naive child a long time ago, shouldn’t he? But he didn’t, and he was so, so confident he would’ve fallen in love with America again. He was so, so confident she’d remind him of the reason why he dropped every-fucking-thing he ever had and crossed that ocean for the first time.

He wanted to forget Dallas, forget last year’s clusterfuck, and he wanted to just point out to the world that he didn’t find his two rings in a cereal box; he wanted to point out that he’s a good player, a great player, _he’s one of the best_ — because he is, — and he’s not a joke and he’s not an hoax, he’s a hero — because he is. He wanted to prove that he can handle the press, and the weight of expectations and he wanted to prove that he could, he could, he could do this.

He couldn’t.

He still thinks he _could_ , honestly; the thing is the Lakers clearly don’t. They don’t believe in him anymore, or themselves, for what it matters, just look at Kobe’s faux smile and how he’s forcing himself to make a joke of everything, because he knows perfectly well that he’s just wasted another year, and when you’re Kobe Bryant every fucking second is gold.

Pau feels nervous, defeated, and angry. He keeps it together, because it’s the last thing he has.

The arena is chanting. It’s all a play, and it’s time to step forward and take a bow.

 

They walk off the court in a slow, unnerving procession; lit up by the hysterical blinking of flashes, punctuated with the useless, cruel questions of journalists Pau has never loved.

Pau doesn’t smile, because a funeral is not a place to be happy; he recites his load of bullshit as calmly and convincingly as he can, he wipes a drop of sweat off his brow and as soon as it’s clear he’s not going to spit out anything crazy or even remotely interesting, they let him go.

He can imagine what sorts of declarations the journalists are fishing for, but he’s never been the type to rant on his hate of the world, not even after bad games; he didn’t lose it when they kept suggesting he might’ve been unknowingly shared his girlfriend with the entire male population of Beverly Hills, he’s most certainly not gonna lose it now.

The locker room is empty when he gets there, which doesn’t surprise him. Kobe was being tackled by at least twenty different reporters out there, the coach and the rest of the team only slightly less cornered. Pau is pretty sure none of them will be a dick, there won’t be any more bloodshed tonight — what would be the point of that, if the press and the fans and the entire universe have already found their scapegoat?

Pau is determined not to care about anything, as long as he’s within the walls of the AT&T Center. He doesn’t care about insults and he doesn’t care about lost matches and he doesn’t care about any of this bullshit. He doesn’t care, and he won’t care for as long as he can.

Choking back the anxiety, the disappointment and the anger looks like the best coping mechanism ever, certainly better than the clumsy frustration with which, twelve months ago, he tried to defend himself in front of the world for things that were only marginally if fault.

Troy walks in with his head hanging low, his mouth turned in a sad upside smile; they must’ve scrambled him pretty hard out there. Pau is still a good guy, after all, and he reaches out to clap his shoulder, even though the last thing he wants right now is to share human contact with his teammates.

Troy’s face scrunches up in something less depressing.

“I loved it when you made the coach explode, man,” he says, sincerely amused. Pau tries to put together a smile, even though that wasn’t his best moment, from a professional and a personal point of view, and he’s starting to regret it already; he can appreciate the appreciation, though.

Then, Troy looks up at him and squints. “Uh, Pau, you’re bleeding.”

He waves vaguely at Pau’s face, and when Pau touches a hand to his own cheek, his fingers get stained with blood; it’s the scratch he got when Duncan threw him into the first row, who the fuck knows when it split open again.

“Thanks,” Pau says, absently. He should go look for Joaquín, because his physio might kill him and then bring him back to life just to kill him again if he tried to treat the cut himself; as he’s stepping towards the exit, the door swings open and the rest of the team pours into the changing room.

Pau does what he can not to cringe.

Ron friendly knocks their shoulders together when he walks by; Matt shoots him a tight-lipped smile; Devin doesn’t even look a him; Kobe winks, already on damage control; Derek is the first and the only one who stops in front of him, and frowns.

“Is that… blood?” he asks, tipping his head to the side. Pau smiles, politely.

“It’s fine, Joaquín will take care of me,” he says. Derek nods and steps to the side to let him go. For a moment, Pau has this sudden, crazy urge to walk _over_ him, like would with a bump in the road; he catches himself in time, and he all but flies out of the locker room.

The thing is, the Lakers are a great team, truly, they’re all wonderful people and Pau is perfectly fine with them, all of them, to the point that he doesn’t mind the fact that he spends more time with them than with all of his friends, his real friends, and family. He even doesn’t hate himself that much anymore for moving out of Memphis — leaving Juanqui behind, — three years ago, right in the middle of the season.

Everything’s great, as long as things go smoothly.

But then, after every single lost match the air gets thick and heavy, and the walls of the locker room seem determined to close down on them. If they’re on court, it’s fine, because all the arenas have high ceilings and bright lights everywhere and Pau won’t get claustrophobic even if they’re twenty, twenty-five points behind; but the locker room is tiny and it keeps shrinking around fifteen players in full gear.

Sometimes, Pau just needs to be on his own and break down. Right now he can’t even think about crumbling, but his mouth tastes different, salty and unfamiliar, and he needs to put as much space as possible in between his teammates and himself.

Joaquín is on the phone when Pau finds him, two corners away. He’s facing the other way, but he’s hunched down and keeps running a hand through his hair, so it can’t be a fun conversation, so he must be talking about the game.

Pau clears his throat and tries to pull a neutral face; Joaquín turns around a little abruptly, but he relaxes the moment he sees Pau.

“Hey,” he says. He immediately squints at the blood on Pau’s cheek, and says into the phone, “Look, I’ll call you back, Pau’s bleeding to death… no, no, of course I’m kidding, it’s just a scratch. Yeah. Sure. If you wanna talk to him, I can put him o— yeah, right, sorry, sorry.”

He keeps apologizing over and over again for a moment longer, then he hangs up, sighs, and pockets his phone. Pau doesn’t have to ask, but he can’t help it.

“Was that Marc?”

Joaquín pulls a penitent face.

“Sorry, you know how he is,” he mumbles; Pau does know how his brother is. “C’mon, lemme take a look at that war wound.”

Pau sighs and agrees to follow him to the infirmary.

Marc has this insane rule, which says that whenever Pau or Juan Carlos or Ricky or Sergio or anyone loses a game, no matter how insignificant or epically important, he won’t get in touch with them for at least three hours. He’s still an anxious mother hen, though, so sometimes he’ll get really, really crazy about it, and he’ll call the medics, or some steward at the arena if he knows any, or just basically anyone, except the person he’s so interested in. Last year, for example, when Barcelona got kicked out of the Euroleague by Panathinaikos, Marc actually called Vanessa to ask her to call Ricky’s mother, who was in Athens, and let him know how everyone was doing.

Pau used to get annoyed by it, but right now, he’s insanely grateful for his brother’s idiosyncrasy. He can’t deal with everything that just happened on his own, but a phone call by his little brother would just make it all worse: they wouldn’t have anything to say to each other, because there’s nothing nice to say, no reassurance to give without it sounding insanely fake and unreal, and Pau can’t think about that, now.

He does feel like hearing from Adriá, instead; he was working on some science project from school, yesterday, and he’d know how to distract Pau rambling on and on about explosives and chemistry and maths.

Joaquín makes him sit on an ambulance-like stretcher, anyway, and gets a first aid kit out of nowhere. Pau doesn’t even blink when the disinfectant touches the wound and makes it crackle; he clenches his jaw, closes his eyes so he won’t see Joaquín’s worried, sorry expression.

“All stories must come to an end,” he mumbles, as Joaquín sticks a flesh-colored, practically invisible band-aid to his cheek.

“It’s fine,” Joaquín says, clearly ignoring him. “Let’s get your feet under ice.”

Pau keeps still for another moment, because he doesn’t feel like going anywhere.

 

He gets home some twenty-five years later, but actually, it’s only been half a day. Coach Brown managed to keep the press from going Shark Week on them at the airport, and that’s pretty much the best thing he’s done ever since he got to their bench. Pau is tired, still nervous, and he feels slightly unbalanced.

He should stop by a kiosk and buy all the newspapers to begin the usual collection of insults, but he can’t bring himself to do it yet. He just wants to throw himself to bed, his own bed, and be quiet and alone for a while.

Naturally, Silvia still hasn’t left for work.

Pau finds her in the kitchen, she’s heating up a cup of coffee in the microwave. She’s still in her pajamas, her hair tied up in a messy ponytail. She must’ve heard the front door, but she still waits a moment before turning around.

“Hey,” she says, her voice as soft as her smile. Pau nods and drops down his bag, walking to her to brush her cheek.

“Hi,” he mumbles, and Silvia leans into his touch like a proper girlfriend. Pau looks at the microwaves’ clock counting down red numbers just like a scoreboard; he closes his eyes and breathes in. “I’m going to bed.”

Silvia nods and briefly kisses his cheek before stepping away.

Pau is kind of fine that she’s here; being alone would’ve made him not happy, because there’s no way he’s going to be happy right now, but maybe a tiny bit more comfortable, but Silvia is not intrusive, she doesn’t worry. Silvia doesn’t care that much about basketball, and Pau is perfectly okay with that because he absolutely doesn’t feel like talking, stopping to think — he didn’t even switch his phone back on.

He sits on the edge of his bed to take off his shoes, and then he flops back without giving a thought to the clothes he’s wearing, that just crossed the country.

He stares at the ceiling for a while, then he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. He feels stretched; he left a piece of himself in San Antonio, and another piece he lost with every shot he missed, and most of him actually never left Barcelona, which is probably the main problem.

Pau is always thinking back to the two months he spent home after the Eurobasket; he thinks about that even more often than the fucking playoffs; he thinks about Europe and Spain and Barcelona and home and Juan Carlos more often than he ever did before.

He always thinks about it, whenever things don’t go too well, because the thought of what’s waiting for him back there is his zen garden; and this year, well, things just never started being okay, so he’s been thinking about it a lot. He does think about it a lot.

He looks back so often that Spain doesn’t feel so far away anymore. He looks back so often that, actually, America has started to feel a little colder, a little more dull, far less attractive than even Lithuania.

It’s not like he didn’t watch football or Rafa’s games or he didn’t care about the economical crisis or his country’s politics, before; it’s just that, _before_ , he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been at Camp Nou. And now it feels like he was there just yesterday, watching Carles and Gerard and Messi; and he’s been there with Juan Carlos, and Juan Carlos dragged him to the tribune’s toilets and kissed him, and then he kissed him again, on a different night, an Euroleague night, in a storage room at Palau. Juan Carlos kissed him and Pau is constantly surrounded by the scent of his cologne, even right now. Even right now he can hear the stadium chanting and Juan Carlos’ knee pressed flat against his through the entire match.

It’s just that America is now over; Pau always knew it would happen eventually, one way or another. Hoping for the best possible scenario, believing in it and bleeding for it isn’t always enough, and it’s fine, really, it’s fine that there’s nothing left to do and it’s fine that they’ll crush him and everything he’s ever done, it’s fine that they’ll just pin all the fault to his back.

It’s fine.

Pau is the ghostly white Spaniard who plays the piano, dammit; it’s not like he made peace a lifetime ago with the fact that there’s always gonna be someone more than willing to play darts using his face, his career, his happiness as a target.

And he’s not running away. He never wanted to peter out in a crap team, that would never be okay; so, he’s not running.

Silvia walks into the room as he’s going through his drawers.

“Why are you packing?” she asks, not really surprised, just slightly curious. Pau fishes out his favourite socks, the ones that Elsa gave him for Christmas a couple of years back, and some other random pairs, and stuffs them in the inner pocket of his suitcase.

“I’m going home,” he says, then walks back into the closet because he’s gonna need some boxers.

“Oh,” Silvia says, simple as that. She curls a lock of hair around a finger, thoughtful. “Marc called this morning. Really early.”

Pau was expecting that.

“He woke you up?”

“Yeah. He apologized, but I don’t really think he forgot about time zones.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so either.”

Silvia looks up at the ceiling with an amused smile. Pau grabs some t-shirts, a pajama, throws them on the bed and then proceeds to neatly fold everything and set it down in the suitcase.

Silvia crosses her arms.

“Are you coming with me?” Pau asks, finally. It’s not like the silence between them was uncomfortable or awkward, because these sorts of things just don’t happen, with Silvia. She’s never uncomfortable with Pau’s random decision-making; she doesn’t ask for anything, ever, she’s a roommate more than a girlfriend, and that’s a big part of the reason why she’s still around Pau.

The truth is that Pau actually has no idea how to talk to her.

She sighs and looks up at him from under her dark, curvy eyelashes.

“I can’t leave work,” she says. He nods, tersely; it’s fine, he figured that. He asked out of courtesy, and Silvia knows that. “Did you book your flight already?”

“No, actually,” Pau tells her, wondering if he should take two or three shirts with him — he can’t remember how many he still has in Barcelona, and if they still fit him. “I’m not leaving right now, anyway. Maybe tomorrow, maybe on Thursday… there’s no rush.”

Silvia looks at him in a way that seems to ask, _why are you packing already, then, if there’s no rush?_ She doesn’t say a word, anyway, so Pau doesn’t feel compelled to answer, to explain that he really, truly needs not to stay still.

He really, truly needs to be in Barcelona. He really, truly needs to hurry the fuck up, hurry the fuck up a lot; his heartbeat going crazy with it. He wants to be back already, it’s six months he wants it, six months he’s trying to convince himself that he doesn’t, and twelve hours he’s stopped.

There’s no need for Silvia to know that.

“Let me know when you leave,” she says.

“I think you’d notice,” he replies, without even thinking about it.

Silvia smiles, almost imperceptibly, and Pau can’t really tell if she pities him, herself or the two of them , this sort of relationship that keeps them together and apart at the same time.

“Let me know anyway,” Silvia says, not unkindly. She kisses him again, this time her lips press very briefly to the corner of his mouth, and it’s uncharacteristically intimate. She lingers close for another moment before turning away and leaving him alone.

 

Pau takes three shirts with him, but he doesn’t leave until a week later, the day of the final Conference game. He stuck around for so long because he thought about it, and he realized that, yeah, disappearing in Spain right after the San Antonio disaster would’ve been him running away.

Shit, he was running away.

He was running away and he would have, if it hadn’t been for Adriá who called him and begged for him to stay, face the murdering media because, _Pau, if you leave right now there won’t be anyone fighting back, reminding them they’re so full of bullshit, pointing their fingers at you because it’s easier; journalists are just like Joe and Martin and Josh from high school, do you remember them? They used to throw me in the dumpsters because I’m Spanish and I look funny and I like maths more than girls and you can’t let them win._

So, Pau stayed, and he attended interviews and press conferences and he got recorded on tape and iPhones and whatnot. He kept his head as up as humanly possible, and he likes to think that he did it for his baby brother but the truth is, he mostly did this for himself. Because maybe he can decide he doesn’t care about what the world thinks about him, but every witty shitty wordplay with his name and an offensive adjective is still a knife wound to the back; and in the end, when you look back, it’s the losses that you’ll be counting, not the victories, so he had to win this one, or rather, this one he couldn’t lose.

And he didn’t.

So, he stayed, and whenever they ask him something wonderfully stupid, he picks at the band-aid on his cheek, and then at the slight crease of his skin when the scratch is almost healed; it reminds him of all the reasons why he’s still here, all the reasons why he’s still being polite and understanding when it would be so easy to just flip everyone off and get the fuck back home.

Pau stayed.

But then Kobe walks to him after the umpteenth press conference, and it might not be official yet, but it’s pretty obvious that Pau is not going to be a Lakers player for too long anymore — he probably stopped being one last year, they just forgot to notify him; Kobe, however, smiles up at him and knocks their shoulders together.

“Hey, Spain,” he says, surprisingly cheerful considering that he just got his own ass handled to him by Tony Parker. “Are you coming to Andrew’s, tonight? We watch the game, hang out a little… c’mon, don’t tell me no!”

And he laughs, which is when Pau realizes he can’t take this anymore. He smiles, genuinely happy, for the first time in a week.

That night, as half of the Lakers roster gets comfortable in Bynum’s living room, Pau falls asleep with his head resting against the plane’s window.

 

He’s really back.

Pau almost can’t believe that he’s actually back to the familiar, enormous baggage reclaim wing at the Prat; he almost can’t tune his ears back to the smooth-and-sharp sound of Catalan, he almost can’t pick up Spanish, he can’t quite believe he’s not listening to that much English anymore. He’s really back, and it’s the best feeling in the world.

He shoves his FC Barcelona trucker hat a little further down his nose and hopes it’ll still be enough to keep hordes of kids at bay; he’s not entirely ready to face an endless sea of wide-eyed tiny fans asking for his sweaty socks.

He follows the arrows pointing to the exit, happy and brave.

And then he freezes right on the other side of the sliding doors, his eyes going wide under the visor — so much for not attracting attention. Unless he’s seeing things, someone’s there for him, and _nobody_ except Marc knew exactly when he’d get here.

“’Nessa?” he asks, and he feels such an idiot, because yeah, of course it’s Vanessa, with Elsa sitting in her arms and Lucía right beside her.

Pau smiles, he laughs, and Lucía is running towards him yelling his name on the top of her lungs; he crouches down to let her throw her arms around his neck and the he lifts her up — she’s heavier than he remembered and still so tiny and warm and adorable. Pau spins on his pivot foot and Lucía giggles uncontrollably, she grabs at him harder.

“Hey, Pau,” Vanessa says, grinning up at him when he eventually gets closer.

Pau’s cheeks are hurting with how hard he’s smiling, and he doesn’t even get worried when Lucía, sitting in the crook of his elbow, takes his hat, de facto ruining his brilliant disguise. He just leans in to kiss Elsa on the cheek.

“Did Marc call you?” he asks Vanessa, and he’s curious and amused and Lucía is still trying to decide what to do with his giant hat.

Vanessa chuckles and Pau’s smile goes a little softer when she says, “Actually, Juanca called Marc. And then Ricky called us this morning, and everyone was so happy about that, right, honey?”

She ruffles Elsa’s hair, and the girl pouts and tries to hide against her mother’s neck.

Pau is laughing again, and Lucía demands his attention back by grabbing his beard and hugging his head.

“Dad told me you played an entire game last week,” he tells her, bouncing her in his harms a little. Lucía’s smile is so big and bright that the rest of the world suddenly looks a little too grey.

“All the minutes!” Lucía says, throwing her arms up to make her point. “And, I scored fifteen points!”

Pau’s breath catches dramatically.

“I thought you didn’t keep scores yet,” he says, squinting a little. Lucía giggles.

“No, we don’t, but daddy counted for me,” she whispers into Pau’s ear, which makes him laugh; Vanessa is looking around and frowning.

“You okay?” Pau asks. He throws a glance at his watch and realizes it’s almost eight o’clock — Lucía has to get to school in forty-five minutes, and they’re not exactly close to the city center.

It’s not time that’s bothering Vanessa, anyway, but the small group of half-asleep people who’ve just started to pick an interest in the four of them. It won’t take them long enough to take out a phone and take a picture of Pau and this woman who’s gorgeous enough to be his secret wife, and two girls who’re young enough to be his secret daughters, so Pau grabs his suitcase and locks his hold on Lucía.

“Let’s go to school!”

 

Pau considers the matter at hand thoroughly during the hour-long shower he indulges in the moment he’s back home, and in the end he decides he’s walking to the Palau. It took him a little over thirty-five minutes when he was twenty years old, but today he leaves an hour and a half earlier because he’s pretty sure he’s going to want to get lost.

And he does.

Even though he steers clear of the Ramblas and the more lively Paseos, and most of the places that are so familiar they’re almost part of Pau himself, even just the air itself is enough to make him dizzy with nostalgia. He walks as slowly as he can, because he doesn’t want to miss a single colour. He looks around with the same wonder as always, as if he wasn’t here to stay, but just passingly, for a while.

It’s hard for him to realize that, this time, this is his home and _his home_ , for real; it’s hard for him to realize that the so-far-away America that was all his world for ten years has finally — already, unfortunately, or thankfully, he can’t decide, — spit him out. He feels a bit better than the past few days, maybe because of the clear sky above Barcelona or maybe because Elsa and Lucía hugged him so tight before running to school.

He feels a bit quieter, a bit more whole, and as he walks with his hands buried deep in his pockets he realizes that, yeah, the movie’s over, the lights went back on, but he doesn’t mind it.

It happens that a pretty story, a story you’d loved so much it made you blind and deaf to everything else — days and years and even friends slipping by, if you’re dumb enough to get fooled by the purple and gold around the corner; it happens, that a story like that might leave you with a shitty, bitter ending that you absolutely hate.

It happens, and Pau got that much. It took him a while, or maybe just Lucía’s arms tight around his neck, but he did.

He feels like giving a round of applause.

All stories must come to an end, which means there’s no need to pull a tragedy out of every full stop.

And maybe Joaquín wasn’t really ignoring him; maybe he was just being an adult.

Pau’s head feels light and his chest full of laughter, and as he walks, he grabs his phone and updates his Twitter status.

And then he really can’t think of anything else, because the Palau is so close everything else seems useless. He doesn’t run just because he’s not sure his knees and his legs and his head won’t buckle; his ears are full of the knocking of his heart and it’s ridiculous, it’s wonderful that after all these years — after so many hugs at the airport, so many transoceanic phone calls and so many weeks of silence sometimes, and after so many summers when they clicked back together as if not even a minute had gone by, and with all the tears and loneliness in the world, even, after _so much_ , — it’s ridiculous and wonderful that the thought of Juan Carlos still has the same effect on him.

Then again, Juan Carlos is the kind of person and player who’s never going to stop with the surprises, even though he’s not even consciously trying most of the time.

Pau is burning with the need to see him again and touch him again, because fuck he learned perfectly well that the only time he ever actually feels that _he’s back_ is when he’s hugging Juan Carlos close. When the two of them get back together Pau will automatically reset to the kind of player he can be; and it’s in Juan Carlos’ presence — just that, the simple fact that he’s _there_ , — that Pau finds himself again. Juanqui is not just his best friend, his _amigo del alma_ , and he’s not even just the man Pau so desperately loves; Juan Carlos is the measure and the edge of Pau’s life, Pau’s happiness and delight.

Juan Carlos is the right one, on and off the court, the only one, and when Pau was a kid he used to be scared at how strongly he felt he was _his_ , but that same intensity, that hasn’t wavered one bit in so many years, right now only makes him smile.

His heart is shaking because he wants to see his Juanqui, he’s almost there.

The thing is, Pau only ever fell in love once in his life and it was enough, it’s still more than enough. The thing is that, yes, he is actually soft, he is romantic; he’s unreasonably grateful that, of the two of them, it was Juan Carlos who was born first, because Pau wouldn’t have lasted twenty-three days in the world without him, even though they only met sixteen years later.

The thing is that Pau had never known any thing of beauty except books and basketball and Mozart, until he saw Juan Carlos, a scrawnier teenager than Pau himself ever was, shooting three-pointers with the kind of confidence that comes with decades of success.

Pau is hopeless, but it’s just because of Juanqui, and it’s just because _el cuatro y el siete_ is the only story that doesn’t really end, he doesn’t want it to ever end.

Pau gets close enough to the buildings to realize that there’s already someone in the parking lot, and his heart trips all over itself; it’s just Joe, but Pau’s happy to see him anyway.

“Oi, Joe!” he calls out, waving; Joe looks up from his hands — he was most definitely on Twitter too — and, as soon as he realizes who it is that’s walking up to him, he breaks into a smile that’s half ecstatic and half surprised.

“Yo, Pau! Hey, mate!” he says, laughing, and opens the gate for Pau, then proceeds to hug him tight, which Pau very much appreciates.

“Hi, how are you?” Pau asks, when they’ve both taken a step back.

Joe grins and says, in Spanish, “ _Wonderfully, thanks_.”

Pau laughs. “ _Wow, that’s a big word._ ”

“I know, right? _Raba-boo’s been giving me lessons._ ”

“ _That’s impressive,_ ” Pau nods, patting his arm. “Does Xavi know you call him Raba-boo, though?”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that I know that he knows,” Joe says, dropping his voice dramatically, then he brightens up again. “Anyways, whatcha doin’ around here, mate?”

Pau shrugs, but his cool act is frayed at the edges already. “I’m, uh, visiting.”

Joe laughs. “That’s great. Don’t worry anyways, I got first shower. Juancar’s still in.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Oh, no, you’re just looking around like someone’s after your soul,” Joe giggles, shaking his head. “You didn’t tell him you were coming, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” Pau says, half distracted by the arena’s back door swinging open; Marce and CJ pour out, followed by Pete and Fran, and Joe waves like a crazy person at them — after a moment, Pau is being choked by Fran’s fierce hug. It’s not bad, being hugged by someone who’s as tall as he is, and who’s also not Marc, which is pretty much the biggest benefit.

Pau chuckles, he’s extremely sociable and kind and he doesn’t look hysterical at all; he even ruffles Josep’s hair when the kids get out too. At some point, he’s so engulfed by trying to keep up with three different conversations, which are not even in the same language because CJ, Joe and Pete switched back to English without warning, that when Juan Carlos eventually walks out of the Palau, he doesn’t even realize it.

Suddenly, Fran who was next to him takes a step back, and when Pau turns to look at him he sees Juan Carlos and he just stares and freezes right in the middle of a sentence.

God.

The corners of Juan Carlos’ mouth curl up in a smug smirk, and for a moment he squeezes Pau’s wrist.

“Please, go on, I’m interested,” Juan Carlos says — someone chuckles. Pau doesn’t even bother stopping staring; he’s happy, he’s home.

Eventually, he barks out the breathless tail of a laugh and looks up to Marce.

“So, that’s how Marc became arachnophobic,” he says. He was talking to Pete, actually, and it had nothing to do with Marc and spiders, but it’s not exactly a problem; everyone tells their goodbye in no time, giggling and elbowing each other in a quite unsubtle way, and then Juan Carlos’ fingers are squeezing Pau’s wrist again.

“You walked here, right?” he asks, quietly, staring at his feet. Pau nods, and Juan Carlos looks up and smiles a little. “Let’s go,” he says, which is an invitation Pau really didn’t need, but it’s nice to hear it anyway.

The car is the closest thing to a minivan without it actually being a minivan that you can get, blue, and slightly dusty on the outside. Pete darts by in a bright red spyder, while Juan Carlos has to relocate a giant bunny peluche from the shotgun to the backseat to let Pau in. There’s packets of candy sticking out of every compartment, there’s crumbs on the mats, and Pau falls a little more in love with Juan Carlos with every moment, but that’s not news.

Juan Carlos doesn’t turn the engine on, and they just sit there in silence for a while, without even looking at each other. Pau is so happy he has no idea what to do with himself.

Eventually Juan Carlos turns to look at him and huffs, amused; Pau tips his head to the side, too tired to shift completely, and his smile is soft and lost.

Juan Carlos chuckles under his breath and puts on his seatbelt.

“You saw the girls, right?” he asks. “Vanessa took them to the airport this morning.”

“Yeah, I saw them. Thanks, Juanqui, I… I probably didn’t even realize how much I missed them.”

Juan Carlos huffs again and, when Pau finally turns around, he realizes Juan Carlos has his weird face on, the one he wears when he’s not exactly sure how he should react. Pau frowns, curious, which makes Juan Carlos roll his eyes.

Juan Carlos’ beard is thick, his hair longer than they’ve ever been, ruffled because of the training session, because of the shower, probably also because of the towel he used to rub them dry, since he’s too lazy and a boy and an idiot to use a blow-dried — _it’s too hot_ is his official explanation, even in December.

Juan Carlos is still more gorgeous than Pau can ever live with.

“ _Juanqui_ ,” Juan Carlos says, eventually, waving a hand around in a mindless flourish. He does this all the time — he gets surprised and flushed and embarrassed, whenever Pau uses that nickname; he thinks it’s some sort of code, which is insane, because it’s not just _Juanqui_ , but every single word Pau ever says to him that actually means _I love you so much_.

Juan Carlos pouts, but then he’s leaning in to kiss him; Pau doesn’t think _thank God, finally_ , just because he’s pathetic enough that even just the touch of Juan Carlos’ fingers on his pulse point is worth four, seven, eleven kisses to him.

Not that he’s complaining about the kiss itself, anyway; as he brushes his lips to Juan Carlos’s — touching him ever so slightly, like a first time, only it’s maybe the thousandth or maybe they’re past two or three billions already, — he lifts a hand to cup the side of his face. Juan Carlos pulls back a little, opening his eyes as slowly as he can, as if he wanted, needed to taste the moment he sees Pau again even more than his mouth.

He turns a little to kiss the palm of Pau’s hand, then, and scrunches his nose when Pau thumbs at the tip. He kisses him again and then he sits up again, straightening the seatbelt that left a bright red mark on his neck.

Pau is probably going to lose a lot of money in the next few days, and in the past week he’s had to wave goodbye to an even bigger amount of pride, patience and will to live, but then Juan Carlos spontaneously takes the route to his — Pau’s — place, and that pretty much balances it all out.

Pau smiles, and he’s been through too much, so he reaches out and tangles his fingers to Juan Carlos’ hair, which is wonderfully soft and slightly wet; and then he reaches out a little more, and starts rubbing soothing circles with his thumb behind Juan Carlos’ ear.

Juan Carlos can’t bite back a rough, happy moan, and that’s exactly the only show Pau has ever wanted to watch. 

Pero yo no tengo miedo, no tengo;  
guarda la pólvora y te doy un beso.  
Amar en tiempos violentos para curar las heridas,  
amar en tiempos violentos que va trayendo la vida.  
Yo te declaro mi amor, no, no que no es batalla perdida.  
Yo te regalo mis besos, mi boca, te regalo mis caricias,  
y te regalo mi alma, hasta el fin de los días.  
(Huecco, _Amar en tiempos violentos_ ) 

**Author's Note:**

> — This fic was originally part of a reverse big bang challenge, and it was inspired by [this cover art](http://i.imgur.com/FOIls.png) that [Def](http://el-defe.livejournal.com/) made.
> 
> — Joaquín Juan has been Pau’s personal physio ever since Pau’s got to the NBA; he doesn’t have a Twitter profile but hey, let’s make pretend.
> 
> — The thing about Pau sharing a girlfriend with Beverly Hills is a reference to the insane speculation that spread during the 2011 play-offs, according to which Pau’s poor performance was due to the fact that Silvia, his girlfriend of (then) two years, had maybe slept with one of his teammates. The drama is accurately narrated [here](http://blacksportsonline.com/home/2011/05/bsos-resident-nba-expert-exclusive-the-truth-behind-pau-gasol-rumors/), in case you’re interested, but it’s pretty… horrible. And besides, everyone knows Pau’s really truly married to Juanca, so.
> 
> — Actually I’m the one who doesn’t ever blow-dry her hair, and also I’m the one who calls Rabaseda ‘Raba-boo’. But they do call him Raba, so it could actually be a thing that’s not only mine.


End file.
